Category: Domestic Life

Much better

I’m still a-limpin’ and a-gimpin’, but I think I’m mobile enough to go to work. I took a ton of calcium, as people told me that was the likely problem, and who knows if it helped, but I feel much better and I slept okay. I didn’t actually make it to the doctor, but if you know what the weather was like yesterday you won’t be too surprised. And besides, both of the kids were here yesterday and we actually had a very mellow day.

I made bean soup yesterday. That will allow me to more fully express myself today, what with the MSM and glucosamine and all. And don’t forget the beer.

Somebody’s doing a documentary about Harlan Ellison. That’s special. Want to see Harlan read a story?

The hands on the nuclear clock moved. China’s doing Star Wars stuff… The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty is up in 2009 and what with all the threatening noises being made by Russia, Iran, North Korea and our neighbors to the south, it’s hard to feel like the future is a glorious place. (It’s even harder when you’re experiencing chronic pain, too.) I am reminded of the deathless lines from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”….

“For us, there will never be happiness!”

“We must learn to be happy without it.”

Bucketing snow, raining pain

And Stephen Harper is my country’s Prime Minister.  I suppose it could be worse; Mugabe or somesuch.

I am experiencing almost the same amount of pain and hobbling as I did when I first sproinged my L5S1.  Truly, it’s remarkable.  I’m off to the clinic later to see if I can get some painkillers; sleep last night was a chimerical thing.  They specifically tell you NOT to point your toes when you have this kind of muscle meshugas, but the only way I could sleep was on my stomach with my toes pointed.  I’ve called in sick and I am supposed to have a scheduled vacation day tomorrow but there’s some really weird stuff happening at work that I think I’d prefer to be there to see, and it’s Mr. Clean’s last day before a month of leave, so we prob’ly have to do the download thing.

Onelegwest is staying on until February, Hurrah.   So the Lunch Bunch Mark IV will not be sundered as soon as I feared.

I’m 17 days off cigarettes.  I’ve had two bouts of cravings, both easily managed.

Kira is watching it snow with a look of utmost distaste and a very subdued twitching of her tail. Vis is down to about an eighth of a mile.

Winter blahs

After the creative surge of November comes the dreaded deeps of midwinter, made somewhat better by there being more reflected light with all this snow.  But I have the blahs right down to my toes.  To quote a song I wrote a long time ago, “I feel like I’m swimming in glue”.

 

There’s only one thing to do:

Ong Bak

I saw this at Jerome and Shannon’s:
Ong Bak.

This movie kicks serious, serious butt. I enjoyed about 95 percent of it and the parts I didn’t enjoy went by really fast.

My objections to what was a marvellous piece of badass entertainment are three:

Evil guy is in a wheelchair and has a laryngectomy. And SMOKES THROUGH THE HOLE. Ah, pure evil. What tripe, I wish they’d play to type for a change. Why pick on cripples? If it was a statistically balanced number of evil villains, I’d be a lot mellower, but so many cripped villains… sigh.

Tony Jaa is poetry in motion but when it comes to acting he’s reserved to the point of being like, well, like a solid object.

The script is the lamest ass excuse for a string of chase, fight and fight and chase scenes ever concocted in any human language, although there are two or three hilarious sight gags, including a great piece of graffitti in the middle of the market chase.

Shannon came home and said some very amusing things about her weekend. I think the funniest was, “I’m having a shower to get the smoke off” as she doesn’t smoke and the women she was hanging out with this weekend do. And I’m thinking, 13 days no smokes.

To do list got much bigger

In the last two days I’ve added about 45 items to my to do list and removed…2. However, I’m LOVING Thinking Rock, and it’s finally giving me what I want since the original DOS based Sidekick fell off the software map.

Keith is off to work, I’m off soon to look at a co-op, and then I’m off again to visit Brother Jerome in his new digs here in Burnaby after I pick up an action flick for us to watch. (His spouse doesn’t like action flicks. I do, but only because I’m a sad excuse for a film buff). Katie’s asleep.

By copy to the travelling ones, I’ll have my cell, give me a call and we’ll get the keys squared away….

Thinking Rock

As you can imagine, I have a ship pile of work to do to get myself successfully launched in my new life.  I have been kicking the tires on organizing software, and I think, thanks to deli.cio.us, I have finally found what I’m looking for:  Thinking Rock.

I’ve been messing with it for about an hour, and I have to say that I’m already really enjoying the power and flexibility.  You do need the most recent rev of Java to use it.

Now I know that those of my rel-eo-tives who have a getting-things-done software chip embedded in their skulls, and yes I mean you GoToGirl and Nautilus3 and Tammy too, will be laughing at me trying to find software to help me as I meep meep my way through this tangle of to-dos, but I say if the technology is there, use it.  I’ve now downloaded seven different kinds of GTD software and this is the first one I’ve liked. Not that a recommendation from me means dick-all, but  there you go.

… today so far, with a bit of yesterday

Slept late – first time in weeks. Got up and went through five photo albums, removing my photos. I have to admit that in this at least, the digital age is superior. It was really hard not to cry when I got to pix of Grandad and Bounce.

Both the kids are working today. Keith got an extra two hours put on the front end of his shift, which is something you only do to a 20 year old man if you know he’s organized and disciplined and won’t have been up all night drinking. (At at internet café playing WoW until three, yes, but not drinking.)

Paul paid somebody to get a haircut – first time in over 15 years. I admit to some interest in how it will look the first time he washes it, but he certainly looks different. I admit to some amusement that he went to my stylist, as she had to be polite and say that I’d done an okay job so far. I think we saved about $1500 in haircuts.

Last night I went to the Massage school in New Westminster and got an hour long massage for $30. My foot stopped being numb for about 15 minutes – I wasn’t expecting even that so it was kind of miraculous.

My boss, who will henceforth be known as Mr. Clean (because of a canister of cleanser which is part of his deskshrine), gave me a lift, after he told me that he’d give me a lift if I cleaned off my desk. Ha. He didn’t think I’d do it, and I really DID clean if off, not just pile stuff in corners. And I wiped it down afterwards, seeing as how it looked like a Rorschach nightmare in coffee stains.

Katie’s home

Katie turned up around 5 this morning, looking just fine. She was at a friend’s house a couple of blocks away. She was about to go back to bed and I asked her when she was getting up in the morning and she said 9, and I said, Hunh? You don’t have to work until 5 pm today!

She looked at her schedule and acknowledged that she was having a little temporal difficulty.

Now that I can actually concentrate rather than being entirely freaked out all the time, I plan on having a great weekend, starting with a massage tonight, and then a friend’s birthday party tomorrow, and then lots, and lots of packing and dejunking. That part is a little harder to be enthusiastic about.

In happy family news, Paul has a great niece named Ava and Jesse sent us pix. She must have been scant days old in the family picture they sent, just a wee little mite; we are happy to welcome Ava to the family.